Church reaction too little, too late

The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of "all public duties" after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.

So Mahony won't be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels anytime soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass - he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide, in a line going back to St. Peter.

Given what we now know about Mahony's active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough - it's no punishment at all.

And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.

Go to any one of over 100 of them posted last week at la-archdiocese.org. The very first one in this alphabetical order was written by a anonymous parishioner molested as a child at a Colorado Roman Catholic Church summer camp by the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie, who later worked in Los Angeles.

Dated July 18, 2003, it begins quite simply:

"Pope John Paul II, The Holy See, Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

"Dear Pope: In July 1993 I wrote a letter to you ..."

That long letter detailing the writer's sexual abuse as a child of 7 by Abercrombie was never answered over the decade, though it was copied to other bishops and to princes of the church, including Los Angeles' own Cardinal Roger Mahony, who oversaw Abercrombie's later pastoral career.

"I informed each of you that the Denver diocese of the Roman Catholic Church had covered up Abercrombie's predation of children making it possible for him to molest me and others that I knew of when I wrote to you. ..."

"I informed each of you that this horror was systemic in your church, and to you, dear pope, I wrote, `Your bishops have known about it and they have been covering it up as a matter of course. Apparently, they haven't informed you of their criminal complicity.' So I did.

"In the ten years that have passed I have never heard a word of apology from any of you" with the exception of a bishop who happened to be a family friend, who said: "I am sure the Holy Father will respond to your letter." He never did.

Joelle Casteix, western regional director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the action to remove Mahony from some duties is simply "too little too late."

Most cardinals leave the college in just two ways: by death or by election to the papacy.

Though highly unusual, it is possible to resign. The last to do so was French Cardinal S.J. Louis Billot in 1927. The rub is that the pope has to accept such a resignation, so it's not known if any cardinal has tried to step down during these decades of the church's sexual-abuse scandals or at any other time during the last 85 years.

But, as a small gesture toward acknowledging these enormous crimes against over 500 Angeleno parishioners, Mahony ought to offer his resignation.